An Apple for the Creature

And that was when Remy felt it. There was a sudden change in the atmosphere. The air seemed to get heavier, colder. It was obvious that the others were feeling it as well because they began to look about, talking amongst themselves. The dogs became uneasy, some beginning to whine.

“What happening?” Marlowe asked.

“I have no idea,” Remy answered as he watched Jackie, her face wearing an expression of supreme unease. She was staring at a point somewhere behind him, at something that seemed to have frozen her in place. Remy started to turn, as the lights began to flicker, a sound like an angry hive of bees filling the room.

The barn then went completely dark and somebody cried out, the dogs all reacting in a cacophony of high-pitched yips and booming barks.

The lights momentarily returned, before they started to flicker again, and Remy saw that Jackie was gone, her clipboard lying abandoned on the floor, the door at the back of the barn swinging in the evening breeze.

The room was in chaos with dogs barking crazily, straining at their leashes, as their owners struggled to maintain control. The owners could feel it too: the presence of something unnatural. Remy watched as a few of them dragged their dogs toward the exit, and he started across the room to the swinging back door. Then he noticed that Marlowe was still by his side and he stopped.

“I want you to stay here,” he told the dog, kneeling at eye level.

“Help you,” Marlowe said eagerly. “Find scary Jackie.”

“No, I need you to be a good dog and stay here,” Remy replied firmly.

“Good dog?” Marlowe asked with a tilt of his head.

“Yes, a good dog will stay here and do as he’s told.”

He saw that Marlowe was about to argue, but then the dog sat down just inside the door.

“Good boy,” Remy said, darting out into the night. “I’ll be back.”

—

The cold nighttime air felt charged, but it was the frenzied barking of multiple dogs in the distance that told Remy where to go.

He moved across the back lot, past an obstacle course of some kind, and toward a larger, single-story structure that was the kennel. The closer he got, the louder and more frantic the dogs became. Remy listened to the barks, hearing the panicked message in their cries. They all had one thing in common: they were all concerned for Jackie’s safety.

He reached the back of the kennel, and saw the open door. That strange sensation still clung to the air, and he followed its trail into the building, senses on full alert.

It was even louder inside, the dogs frantically carrying on in response to what was playing out before them. Remy came around a section of cages, catching a glimpse of the woman in the blue sweat suit with the jet-black dye job, standing over the unconscious form of Jackie Kinney.

He stepped into the aisle and caught the woman’s attention. A look of surprise passed across her features, before she looked back to the unconscious woman on the floor.

“Huh,” she said, eyes fixed to Jackie Kinney. “Petey was right, it was you.”

Remy cautiously moved closer.

The older woman looked at him from the corner of her eye. “He said that we had to do this now, or we wouldn’t get the chance . . . that you were here to stop us.”

He stopped moving, watching as her lipstick-covered lips twisted in a crazy smile.

“Did you see the look on her face when I said our names?” the old woman asked Remy. “Patricia Ventura and Petey.” She returned her intense stare to Jackie, still lying motionless upon the ground. “It was like she’d seen a ghost.”

Strangely, the dogs in the kennel stopped barking. Remy could feel their eyes upon him, as they stared out through the mesh of their cages.

“Are you Patricia Ventura?” he asked her.

She nodded. “I am.”

Something moved in the shadows by the floor, and Remy watched as the tiny black dog approached Jackie’s body, its small shape suddenly shifting and blending, seeming to absorb the shadows around it, transforming into something monstrous that reached down with a black, clawed hand to the unconscious dog trainer, hauling her up from the floor.

“And this is Petey,” Patricia said.

Remy lunged toward the creature that seemed to be composed entirely of shadow. As much as he hated to do it, he tapped into the nature that resided deep within, drawing upon the power of Heaven at the core of his being, coaxing the Seraphim forward to help him deal with the fearsome threat he was about to confront.

Through a warrior’s eyes, Remy watched as the creature called Petey reacted, its movements quicksilver fast. Jackie’s body was cast aside, and Petey came at him, immersing him in the darkness of its mass.

The black of the beast seeped through his clothes, and into his flesh, permeating his very soul, and Remy felt an anger—a rage—that threatened to overwhelm him, and to unleash the full fury of the angelic essence that was held in check within the human guise that he wore.

An angelic essence that, if roused to anger, could burn the world to a cinder.

—